As to federalism.—All the conditions which make a federal constitution work successfully in the United States, in Switzerland, and possibly in Germany, are wanting in England and Ireland. No man till the last five or six years has even suggested that Englishmen or Scotsmen desire a federal government for its own sake. Whether Mr. Gladstone himself has any wish to federalise the whole United Kingdom is at least open to doubt. Where federalism has succeeded, it has succeeded as a means of uniting separate communities into a nation; it has not been used as a means of disuniting one State into separate nationalities. The United States, it has been well said, is a nation under the form of a federal government. Gladstonians apparently wish to bind together two, or shall we say three or four, nations, or nationalities, under the reality of a federation and the name of a United Kingdom. While all the powerful countries of the world are increasing their strength by union, the advocates of the new constitution pretend to increase the moral strength of the United Kingdom by loosening the ties of its political unity. If any one ask why federalism which has succeeded in America should not succeed in the United Kingdom, the true answer is best suggested by another question: Why would not the constitutional monarchy of England suit the United States? The answer in each case is the same. The circumstances and wants of the two countries are essentially different; and if this be not a sufficient reply, the reflection is worth making that in the three great Confederacies of the world unity has been achieved, or enforced by armed conflict.
As to colonial independence.—The plain and decisive reason why the loyalty of New Zealand to the Empire affords no presumption of the loyalty under our new constitution of Ireland to the United Kingdom is this: The whole condition of New Zealand is different from the condition of Ireland, and our new constitution is not intended to give Ireland the position of New Zealand. Thousands of miles separate New Zealand from Great Britain. Ireland is separated from us by not much more than twelve miles. New Zealand has never been hostile to England; her people are loyal to the British Crown. Ireland, or part of the Irish people, has been divided from England by a feud of centuries; it would be difficult among Irish Nationalists to obtain even the show of loyalty to the Crown. New Zealand is wealthy, and New Zealand pays not a single tax into the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. Ireland is poor, and, if her taxation is lightened by Home Rule, the tribute which will be paid to England will be heavy, and far more galling than the taxes she now pays in common with the rest of the United Kingdom. The new constitution, again, is utterly unlike a colonial constitution. Its burdens would not be tolerated by any one of our independent colonies. The rights it gives, no less than the obligations it imposes, are foreign to our colonial system. The presence of the Irish representation at Westminster forbids all comparison between Ireland under Home Rule and New Zealand under a system of colonial independence.
But the matter must be pressed further. Even were it possible to place Ireland in the position either of an American State or Swiss Canton, or of an independent colony, the arrangement would not meet the needs of the United Kingdom. This is a point which has not as yet arrested attention. For the safety of the United Kingdom it is absolutely necessary that the authority of the Imperial Government, or, in other words, the law of the land, should be enforced in Ireland in a sense in which the law of the land is rarely enforced in federations, and in which it is certainly not enforced by the Imperial Government in self-governing colonies.
In federations the law of the land is nearly powerless when opposed to the will of a particular State. President Jackson's reported dictum, 'John Marshall[118] has delivered his judgment, let him now enforce it if he can,' and the fact that the judgment was never enforced,[119] are things not to be forgotten. They are worth a thousand disquisitions on the admirable working of federalism. But there is no need to rely on a traditional story, which, however, is an embodiment of an undoubted transaction. The plainest facts of American history all tell the same tale. No Abolitionist could in 1850 without peril to his life have preached abolition in South Carolina; difficult indeed was the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law and small the practical respect paid in Massachusetts to the doctrine of the Dred Scott Case. Unless all reports are false, the Negro vote throughout the Southern States is at this moment practically falsified, and little do the Constitutional Amendments benefit a Negro in any case where his conduct offends Southern principle or prejudice. For my present argument it matters nothing whether the oppression of individuals or the defiance of law was or was not, in all these cases, as it certainly was in some instances, a violation to the supreme law of the land. If the law was violated then, why should we expect Imperial law to be of more force in Ireland than federal law in South Carolina, or in Massachusetts? If the rights of individuals were not adequately protected by federal law against the injustice of a particular State, then why expect that the provisions of our new constitution, far less stringent as they are than the protective provisions of the United States Constitution, should avail to protect unpopular persons in Ireland against the legal tyranny of the Irish Executive or the Irish Parliament?
Experience of federalism is not confined to the United States. The Swiss Confederation is in Europe the most successful both of democratic and of federal polities. The Swiss Executive exercises powers common to all continental governments but of a description which no English Cabinet could claim, and the Swiss Executive is made up of statesmen skilful beyond measure in what may be called the diplomacy of federalism. Yet in Switzerland, as in the United States, federal government means weak government. Ticino is a small Canton, but from the days of Athenian greatness small States have been the instructors of the world, and Englishmen, hesitating over a political leap in the dark, would do well to study the Ticinese revolution of September 11, 1890. The Radicals of the Canton rose in insurrection, and deposed the lawful government by violence; as Englishmen may remember, the contest though short involved at least one murder. The Swiss Executive (called the Federal Council) forthwith took steps to restore order and to reinstate the lawful Cantonal government. Their own commissioner, a military officer, in effect declined to put the overthrown government back in power. Order was restored, but the law was never vindicated. A strange set of negotiations, transactions, or intrigues took place. In the Federal Assembly at Berne, the Conservatives, a minority, urged the rights of the lawful government of Ticino. The Liberals defended or palliated the revolutionists. On the whole the advantage seems to have rested with the latter. A trial before a Federal Court took place, but the accused were acquitted. No one, if I am rightly informed, was punished for an act of manifest treason. It is even more noticeable that Professor Hilty, a distinguished and respected Swiss publicist, vindicates or palliates the admitted breach of law, in deference to the principle or sentiment, which if true has wide application, that 'human nature is not revolutionary, and that no revolution ever arises without a heavy share of guilt (Mitschuld) on the part of the government against which the revolution is directed.'[120] The instructiveness of this passage in Swiss history as regards the working of our new constitution is obvious; Englishmen should specially note the interconnection between lawlessness in Ticino and the balance of parties at Berne; it is easy to foresee an analogous connection between revolution, say in Dublin or Belfast, and the balance of parties at Westminster. But this is not my immediate point; my point is that the Federal Government at Berne cannot enforce obedience to law in Ticino in the way in which Englishmen expect that the Imperial Government shall, under any circumstances, enforce or cause the law to be enforced in Ireland.
But Ireland, it will be said, is to occupy a position like that of a self-governing colony. In British colonies the Imperial power and the rule of law are respected; both therefore will be respected in Ireland. The plain answer to this suggestion is that in a British self-governing colony, no law is enforceable which is opposed to colonial sentiment and which the colonial Ministry refuse to put into execution. One well-ascertained fact is enough to dispose of a hundred platitudes about Imperial supremacy and the loyal obedience of our colonies. Victoria is as loyal to the Crown as any colony which England possesses, yet the submission to law of the Victorian Government and people is not by any means unlimited. Ten years ago three British subjects arrived at Melbourne and were about to land. Popular sentiment, or in other words the will of the mob, had decreed that they should not enter the colony. The Victorian Premier (Mr. Service) announced in Parliament that their landing should be hindered. The police, acting under the orders of the Ministry, boarded the ship which brought the strangers, went near to assaulting the captain, and forcibly prevented the hated travellers from setting foot on shore. By arrangement between the Melbourne Government, the captain, and the three men, who were by this time in terror of their lives, the victims of lawlessness were carried back to England. That the law had been grossly violated no one can really dispute. The violation was the more serious because it excited no notice. No appeal was apparently made to the Courts. The Governor—the representative of Imperial power and Imperial justice—knew presumably what was going on, yet he uttered not one word of remonstrance. The Agent-General for Victoria, when at last a private person in England called attention to the outrage at Melbourne, pleaded in effect the plea of necessity, and described the act of tyranny, whereby British citizens were in a British colony turned into outlaws, as 'an act of executive authority.' The Imperial Government did I believe—what was perhaps the wisest thing it could do—nothing. Imperial supremacy in the colonies was, as regards the protection of unpopular individuals, admitted to be a farce. What, however, rendered the three travellers unpopular? They were Irish informers who had aided, unless I am mistaken, in the conviction of the Phoenix Park murderers. Let us now in imagination conceive our new constitution to have come into being, and transfer the transactions at Melbourne in 1883 to Dublin in 1894. Will the Imperial supremacy which is supposed to be so effective in the colonies be of any more worth in Ireland than in Victoria?[121]
Were it true, then, which it certainly is not, that the conditions exist in Ireland which conduce to the maintenance of federal power in the State of a well-arranged federation, and to the maintenance of Imperial power in a self-governing British colony, this would not be enough to support the argument in favour of the new constitution. For the Imperial Government needs that the law should be maintained, and the rights of individuals be protected, in Ireland with greater stringency than the law is enforced or the rights of individuals are protected either under a federal government or in a British colony. Miserable indeed would be the position of England were she forced in Ireland to wink at lawlessness such as but the other day disgraced New Orleans, or at mob law countenanced by the 'Executive,' such as in 1883 ruled supreme at Melbourne. Foreign powers at any rate would rightly decline to let the defects of our constitution excuse the neglect of international duties. If England cannot shuffle off her responsibilities, England is bound in prudence to maintain her power.
iv. The Policy of Trust.
'I believe myself that suspicion is the besetting vice of politicians and that trust is often the truest wisdom.'[122]